Miscellaneous Outer Space Objects

Maybe a promising direction for future work, or maybe a very lonesome cul-de-sac…I mean, it’s really simple, I guess, but I can maybe see things in it that aren’t there for people who can’t see what I’m seeing. Anyway, it’s 2:08 a.m., so I can’t tell. Plus I have to wrap this bookwork stuff up because I have to be at a literary festival 50 miles away in 6 hours and I’ve had about 4 hours of sleep in the last 300 months. Hey, though, here’s something you might like to know: amazing human beings are not few and far between, but are instead in lots and lots of places. Which was hard to see back when I was working for the establishment doing establishment type of activities. But it’s not hard to see now that I’m doing what I want to do in a world full of other and better humans.

Words I Like

The way you drop is like a stoneMaking out you're flyingBut you've just been thrown.

—The Jesus and Mary Chain, "Drop"

There was a book in the library about Holland. There were lovely foreign names in it and pictures of strangelooking cities and ships. It made you feel so happy.

—James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices, we watch the Battle of Borodino with them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.

Is it any wonder that no truly respectable society has ever trusted its artists?

—Ursula K. Le Guin,Introduction,The Left Hand of Darkness

"What are my dreams?"

—Jerri Blank

Being a famous artist in the Culture meant at best it was accepted you must possess a certain gritty determination . . . .

—Iain M. Banks,Excession

"I hope you will consider what I arrange, but be skeptical of it."

—John Berger,Ways of Seeing

Some sort of pressure must exist; the artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world.